www.elsblog.org - Bringing Data and Methods to Our Legal Madness

21 February 2006

Abstract - Judicial Elections

Melinda Gann Hall (Michigan State) and Chris Bonneau (University of Pittsburgh) offer a positive take on
judicial elections in the current issue of the American Journal of Political Science. Here is the abstract:

We assess whether quality challengers in state supreme court
elections have a significant impact on the electoral successes of incumbents
and whether the electorate seemingly makes candidate-based evaluations in these
races. To address these questions, we examine 208 elections to the states'
highest courts from 1990 through 2000 in the 21 states using partisan or
nonpartisan elections to staff their benches. From a Heckman two-stage estimation
procedure that takes into account factors influencing challengers' decisions to
run as well as factors affecting the electorate's choices among candidates, we
find that quality does matter. Experienced challengers significantly lessen the
electoral security of incumbents, and the electorate appears to evaluate
challengers' qualifications. These findings stand in stark relief to
traditional notions that the electorate is incapable of responding to candidate
stimuli beyond incumbency and that judicial elections inherently are an
ineffective means for securing popular control over the bench.

Comments

Should one really be reviewing the current issue of the American Journal of Political Science at 1:10 a.m.? Empirical studies of Ph.D. candidates in Political Science at U.C. Santa Barbara have recently shown that legal thought, discussion, and analysis conducted after 10 p.m. to be markedly adverse to lucidity, with the effects increasing at a rate that asymptotically approaches complete misinterpretation by 2 a.m.